The Week in Review: November 8th, 2015

All I ever want to do lately is buy fancy pens and cheap notebooks. And eat chicken. The left command key on my laptop has decided to stop working, so we’ll see how long it takes me to either learn to use the right command key or give up and go to the Apple Store and refuse to let them keep Rory Eccleston overnight because I know that means a week.

Uncanny X-Men #600 finds time-displaced young Iceman and regular Iceman finally meeting face to face to discuss the fact that they’re gay, confirming that the older Iceman has been closeted all this time. Brett White’s amazing round-up covers how great this is and also its weak spots (JEAN WHY ARE YOU HERE).

At Salon, Amy Bauer talks frankly about her economic situation and her writing—how it was difficult for her to write while in poverty, but easier now that her husband makes enough money for her to write full-time. And that’s important to talk about, because we so often don’t and pretend that money doesn’t matter in the arts. Bauer even mentions two independently wealthy writers who pass themselves off as struggling writers in two separate Q&A sessions.

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9 thoughts on “The Week in Review: November 8th, 2015”

Oh, wow–the Haysom case. I grew up in the area where that happened, and I remember following the story at the time. It was all over the papers every day for a while. I haven’t thought about it for years, so it was interesting to get the look back and to see where things stand now.

I would be fascinated to learn more (though I’m sure I never will) about the factors that went into the decision to drop Grantland. Are you familiar with all the stuff that went on with Bill Simmons and that lot? And the semi-insider baseball people have been talking about ESPN making the call to get out of the culture business etc? Because I do very, very much wonder whether ESPN ditched Grantland in its capacity as “prestige longform culture and sports writing” or in its capacity as “passion project of a writer from whom we’re now trying to distance ourselves so the NFL will schedule awesome games on Mondays again”.

Please know that although that comment ended up being very long, it could have been MUCH LONGER because I am fascinated by this whole Bill Simmons / ESPN Monday Night Football / Ray Rice / Grantland / NFL business.

So, basically, Bill Simmons — who has a history of being mouthy anyway — said a number of very pointed things about Roger Goodell, the NFL, and its treatment of Ray Rice (basically saying he didn’t believe Roger Goodell hadn’t seen the video of Ray Rice beating up his girlfriend, which was Goodell’s claim), to the point that he was suspended from ESPN for a few weeks in 2014. He’s also criticized ESPN for doing softball journalism on the NFL generally. When Bill Simmons’s contract came up for negotiation this past summer, ESPN not only didn’t renew his contract, they terminated it effective right away (instead of in the fall, which is when it was due to expire).

ANOMANOUS SOURCES have said that the NFL deliberately gave ESPN a shitty slate of Monday Night Football games in retaliation for Simmons (and Keith Olbermann also) talking shit, and that ESPN fired Bill Simmons because they want the NFL to love them again.

I’m agnostic on whether I believe this — I don’t think we have enough good information to call it one way or the other — but I would not be at all surprised to learn that top brass at ESPN decided that Bill Simmons was squandering their good will with the NFL, and was thus no longer a good investment. At the very least, I think it’s likely that when ESPN had to make a financial decision about Grantland’s future, they took into consideration how critical Simmons has been of them, and how personally loyal most of the Grantland writers are to Simmons (thus how unlikely that they’d side with ESPN in a fight).